Romance and Reverie: Holst and his contemporaries
rec. 2024, Ruddock Performing Arts Centre, Edgbaston, UK
Albion Records ALBCD065 [79]
Recently, when reviewing a SOMM release of archive recordings of music by Gustav Holst, I lamented the fact that in his 150th Anniversary year there had been so few new releases dedicated to his music. This release from Albion Records at least partially redresses the balance. Although Albion is the recording arm of the Vaughan Williams Society, this disc has been released in association with The Gustav Holst Society. However, before you get too excited about discovering many/any lost Holstian treasures, of the generous 79:10 playing time, only three works, totalling 27:27, are by Holst.
The programme centres around the playing of violinist Hannah Roper variously accompanied by pianist Martin Jacoby, harpist Valeria Clarke or in turn accompanying soprano Emma Tring, which I find slightly curious. Roper plays very well; she is technically secure and musically sensitive. Likewise, Jacoby is an attentive and skilled accompanist with the same qualities applying to the other performers too. Albion’s presentation is typically good and the engineering is unfussily supportive of the playing and the scale of much of the music. My issue is really with the programme and the concept. The intention seems to be to create a linkage between the composers where – except for the well-known friendship between Holst and Vaughan Williams, who frequently and willingly submitted their scores to each other for comment – none really exists apart from their being coeval. In isolation, the works by Hurlstone, Clarke and Ethel Barns are attractive if essentially slight. Two of the Holst works are “arranged” for violin by Roper but really when looking at the original scores this is no more than various judicious octave transpositions as and when required – the piano parts previously existing in versions either by the composer himself (Invocation and Song of the Night) or by his daughter (Lyric Movement). The Vaughan Williams work included – The Lark Ascending – is hardly an innovative choice; even when as attractively played as here in a new version for harp and violin, that really does seem like a missed opportunity given the ubiquity of that work.
William Hurlstone is represented by six brief pieces. The first four are the Four English Sketches and the other two form two of the three (why not record the third Intermezzo too?) posthumously published Three Pieces for the Violin. The Sketches are genuinely charming in a kind of Edward-German-out-of-a-Coates-Chappell Ballad kind of way and are a nicely contrasted group very well played here. The liner makes something of a claim that the Revery and Romance “pose an interesting challenge to interpret” but these are still intentionally uncomplicated pieces – and none the worse for that. Collectors will know Hulstone’s name as a lost talent given that he died aged just thirty. In the early years of Lyrita, his work was revived with LPs of his larger scale chamber music and some orchestral scores including a Piano Concerto. He was Holst’s contemporary at the Royal College of Music but even Holst’s early scores share very little aesthetic common ground with Hurlstone. The function of these pieces – as it was for the Ethel Barns – was to make some money for the composers by providing attractive salon music for the domestic and amateur market. They are deliberately modest works, well-crafted and appealing for sure, but were never intended to show their composer’s most questing or exploratory sides.
The complete Hurlstone scores can be viewed on IMSLP here and here as can the Barns Hindoo [sic] Lament here and Valse Caprice here. Barns is a composer known to me only through her La Chasse that was brilliantly performed by Clare Howick on her Naxos “British Women Composers” disc. Clearly her compositions having a higher level of technical demand were a result of them being written, at least in part, for her own use as a violin soloist. Even a cursory glance at one of her five violin sonatas – Sonata No.2 in A major is viewable on IMSLP – shows a greater/more serious musical intent and sweep than was ever the intention in the salon works.
Given the ‘miniature’ nature of the non-Holst/RVW works, Rebecca Clarke’s Midsummer Moon is the most significant and substantial. The liner rightly points towards an impressionistic expressive and harmonic freedom and by some distance this is the most intriguing piece on the disc – given the familiarity of the Holst works. It has also been previously recorded on Dutton by Lorraine McAslan.
If this review has so far seemed lukewarm, this is the point to applaud how well Roper plays this music. She and pianist Jacoby find exactly the right level of expressive simplicity and directness in the Hurlstone and Barns works but when in Midsummer Moon the technical demands are significantly higher she is fully on top of that, , while still maintaining exactly the right kind of light and supple tone. The other Clarke work is the Three Irish Country Songs for voice and violin. I had never heard or heard of these pieces and they are very good indeed. Clarke finds a way to set them using just violin that is complimentary to the vocal line but without resorting to faux-folksy fiddling. Soprano Emma Tring has the right kind of unforced and flexible voice that finds a pleasing balance between art-song technique and folksong naturalness. Likewise, Roper’s accompanying violin playing is fluent and intelligent. When reviewing the SOMM archive set, I mentioned that Holst’s wonderful Four Songs for Voice and Violin was still waiting for a definitive performance. Given that this Clarke set is Tring’s only contribution to the disc that seems like an opportunity missed – a triptych of the Vaughan Williams Two English Folksongs alongside the Clarke and Holst sets would have made for a much more interesting “compare and contrast” programme perhaps.
On the disc Holst is represented by three brief concertante works; originally one each for Cello, Violin and Viola. As mentioned, for the two non-violin works Roper has revoiced the solo lines to sit within the violin’s register. Following the original scores it is clear that Roper has made sensible and intelligent choices although, as she says in the liner, the upward transpositions change the character of the music. The high violin register does create a kind of musical kinship with The Lark Ascending and certainly Roper plays these passages with the lyrical ease that they require. The Invocation and A Song of the Night are both relatively early works which although they were given consecutive opus numbers – Op.19 Nos. 1 and 2 – they were written in 1911 and 1905 respectively. The former was originally titled A Song of the Evening which further links the two works in spirit if not date. Again in isolation these are attractive pieces and both have been recorded in their intended orchestral versions which is to be preferred. Musically they feel like something of a diversion by Holst away from the path of his finest and most individual work. The late Lyric Movement originally for viola and orchestra reveals more of that original voice although contemporary opinion from violist Bernard Shore was that it was “bare impersonal music, terribly aloof”. Roper’s sleight of transpositional hand is again unobtrusively effective and she and Jacoby give an effective, musing performance of this pensive and elusive work. Holst only wrote a total of five ‘concertante’ works and none of them seeks to celebrate virtuosity for virtuosity’s sake, but at the same time these three solo string works make considerable demands on the soloist if they are to be played with the sense of easy lyrical line that Roper achieves.
The same is true of The Lark Ascending, so even if the ‘need’ for such versions is more questionable, the calibre of the performances here is clear and indisputable. Valeria Clarke’s arrangement of the piano part here is genuinely very effective and her playing is quite beautiful. Roper’s Lark sits at the more flowing and unsentimental end of the stylistic range but as with the other works on the disc her approach of technical purity and interpretative directness and lack of affectation works very well indeed. I far prefer this conceptually as a ‘new arrangement’ to recent adaptations involving voices or the intractable combination of violin and organ that Albion released on their “Transcriptions from Truro” collection in 2022. From a technical perspective the balance between harp and violin has been well handled and the combination of the two instrumental voices somehow makes the rural/folksong echoes of the work more apparent.
I find this disc to be something of a mixed bag. The performances are genuinely fine, but the programme is oddly unbalanced and incoherent. The inclusion of the slight and charming Barns and Hurlstone works seems to be more about their status as “first recordings” rather than their musical stature. The Clarke works are excellent – but deservingly previously recorded, and while the Lark is given a very attractive performance, perhaps the space on the disc could have been allocated to more unusual repertoire. The Holst works are again well performed but in versions that do not seem to be that necessary. One last little observation – I wish Albion would not colourise well-known black and white images which to my eye always look like an undertaker’s efforts at reanimation.
Nick Barnard
Previous review: John France (September 2024)
Buying this recording via a link below generates revenue for MWI, which helps the site remain free
Contents and performers
Gustav Holst (1874-1934)
Invocation for violin and piano (1911), arr. Hannah Roper
William Hurlstone (1876-1906)
Four English Sketches for violin and piano (publ. posth.1910)
Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979)
Midsummer Moon for violin and piano (1924)
Ethel Barns (1873-1948)
Valse Caprice for violin and piano (1894)
Hannah Roper (violin), Martin Jacoby (piano)
Rebecca Clarke
Three Irish Country Songs for soprano and violin (1926)
Emma Tring (soprano), Hannah Roper (violin)
Gustav Holst
A Song of the Night for violin and piano (1905)
Hannah Roper (violin), Martin Jacoby (piano)
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
The Lark Ascending for violin and harp (1914), arr. Valeria Clarke
Hannah Roper (violin), Valeria Clarke (harp)
William Hurlstone
Revery and Romance for violin and piano (publ. posth.1916)
Ethel Barns
[Hindoo] Lament(1909)
Gustav Holst
Lyric Movement for violin and piano, (1933), arr. Hannah Roper
Hannah Roper (violin), Martin Jacoby (piano)
